Thursday, May 14, 2009

SYNESTHESIA

I) The neurologist Richard Cytowic, explains in his book Wednesday Indigo is Blue that people that have synesthesia perceive 2 separate sensations (view-sound/taste-touch), at the same time, being experienced the sense of the taste in the fingers or in the skin of the face. It is more common of what we think, happening in 1 of each 23 people, becoming that the relationships among the senses are the rule more than the exception. In routine dances, the corporal rhythm imitates the rhythm of the sound, kinetic and visually. It happens that we don't put attention in it. When it is conciouslly developed, the results are surprising: quick learning of languages, new perceptions of the art and creativity. Nabokov, Olivier Messiaen, Amy Beech, Billy Joel and Kandinsky, had synesthesia.

II) Synesthesia, is a high form of conscious perception. Some studies indicate that the gene of the synesthesia unites brain areas (sound-color), not connected. For Cytowic, when this brain hiperconnectivity is expressed in memory, planning and moral reasoning, happens an unusual creativity, making us more clever. In the book The Man Who Tasted Shapes, a patient perceived sounds like geometric forms, projected in his feet or in front of his face, musical letters leaving the screen and strangers inviting him to enter to her private lives.